I have begun to make knife handles. It'll be a while before I get good, but the process is thoroughly enjoyable, and maybe the fancy woods will be so eye-catching that my beginner mistakes will go under radar.

All these knives are in varying stages of incomplete, with the pocket knife and the holly-handled (the white) knife closest to done. The little dagger on the right is probably my favorite - same wood on the handle as the big guy on the left (cocobolo), but it's just a sweet little knife. Or it will be, when I've got it done. The two knives in the back row with matching handles are spalted pecan wood.

This kind of flies in the face of art school, but I find making functional / utilitarian objects every bit as satisfying as "fine art" which serves mostly in the role of aesthetic enhancement of the world. Maybe even more so, because I have plenty of that "too much stuff in the world" sense of things. That sense is where I get the urge to save ALL the scraps, to make things with other things, to recycle stuff, to incorporate and combine. I suppose that is even how the coloring calendar came about -- I didn't want something to JUST hang on the wall and look pretty.